


Once More, With Feeling

by Elvendork



Category: His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
Genre: F/M, Reincarnation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-31
Updated: 2013-08-31
Packaged: 2017-12-25 05:29:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 738
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/949162
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elvendork/pseuds/Elvendork
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The universe owes them a debt.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Once More, With Feeling

**Author's Note:**

> Another sort-of-reuinion fic. It was going to be a triplet of drabbles but the last one wouldn't behave. No owning/profit/all the usual. Sorry for the terrible title. Brief reference to my other HDM fic, Midsummer's Day, but the two aren't really connected.

Xaphania is old even by the count of angels. She has seen and experienced the pain and joy of hundreds of thousands of lifetimes. She watches as Lyra and Will are thrown together and torn apart by circumstance, by fate, by a war neither of them should have had to fight. She watches them rebuild their lives and their worlds, and she is in awe. She watches them grow old so quickly she can barely fathom how humans ever manage to achieve anything. She watches them die one Midsummer’s Day, a million worlds apart and right by each other’s side.

00000

She thinks that is the last of them, yet many years later her mind still returns to those two remarkable human children, and she cannot shake the feeling that the universe owes them a debt. She knows this is not how things work. Even the witches of Lyra’s world, young as they are, understand this simple truth; the universe does not owe anything to anyone. The universe has no ultimate protector to defend the innocent, to punish the wicked or to reward the heroic. She wishes things could have been different, even though she knows the wish is in vain.

00000

Almost all of the windows between the worlds are closed now. Xaphania is tracking the last of them, but she has been distracted. She is in an old human city, of grand stone buildings and majestic spires, soaked in its own history. There is a disturbance here that does not feel like one of the windows. It is not _wrongness_ , but it is not something Xaphania has ever felt before either; she doesn’t know what it is.

The street is busy, but none of them see her; it is the height of summer and the glare of the sun would make her barely visible even to anyone who knew what they were looking for. She scans the faces of the passing humans and wonders at how short their lives are, how fast they must live them. She wonders how the brevity of their time on earth does not terrify them, then reminds herself that it does – that this was what made the Authority’s lie so comforting and attractive to them.

She feels again something _change_ in the air around her, some… _calling_ of the very atoms themselves.

She stops, and frowns. There is nothing _here_ – no window, nor even any undue amount of Dust, nothing but humans and their inventions, and –

Her eyes lock onto them without conscious thought, and instantly she _knows._

They have not seen each other yet. The girl – twenty or so perhaps, but it is hard for Xaphania to judge their ages – is looking at the ground, frowning as though deep in thought. She is climbing the steps leading up to an enormous academic building of some kind. The boy – around the same age, perhaps a little older – is reading a paper which is balanced on the stack of books in his arms. He is going down the stairs, straight towards the girl.

Their collision is inevitable.

‘Sorry!’ the girl exclaims, as the books tumble from the boys arms and cascade down the steps. He curses but waves it off amicably.

‘No, my fault – I wasn’t looking – here, don’t worry –’

For several moments they are both occupied with gathering the fallen books, and by the time they are upright and beside each other once more they are both flushed and smiling apologetically.

‘Sorry about that,’ says the boy, ‘I wasn’t paying attention – are you okay?’

‘Fair’s fair, neither was I,’ says the girl. ‘I’m fine. I hope your books aren’t damaged?’

She holds out the two she has picked up and he takes them. Their fingers brush and heat rises into both of their faces as they hurriedly step a little further apart.

‘No, they seem alright,’ the boy assures her after a moment of awkward silence. Neither of them moves or says anything else. Their eyes flicker towards and away from each other’s faces several times before the girl takes the initiative and holds out her hand for the boy to shake.

‘My name’s Lizzie,’ she says, ‘Lizzie Brooks.’

‘Mark Ransom,’ he replies, taking it.

They both look up, and for an instant each sees their own expression on the other’s face. Something shifts at a level only Xaphania can detect; it feels like the universe itself is sighing with relief.

 

  
 


End file.
